


The Most Impulsive Thing

by Piper



Category: LJ Smith - The Vampire Diaries
Genre: Character Development, F/M, Future Fic, Romance, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:Tarie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:01:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piper/pseuds/Piper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This story is born out of my kind of intense hate for something that's running rampant in the Vampire fandom given the rise of the Twilight series: the female who's willing to give up everything for her vampire boyfriend.  So I've decided to do something with that, taking Bonnie and Damon along for the ride in a fic that takes place about seven years after the series has finished.</p><p>[Written 2007]</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Most Impulsive Thing

**Author's Note:**

> This story is born out of my kind of intense hate for something that's running rampant in the Vampire fandom given the rise of the Twilight series: the female who's willing to give up everything for her vampire boyfriend. So I've decided to do something with that, taking Bonnie and Damon along for the ride in a fic that takes place about seven years after the series has finished.
> 
> [Written 2007]

The discussion always came full circle. It came in different ways each time, but it ended in the same place, because there was no other way that it could end. Bonnie wasn't having it. She wasn't like those other girls. She wasn't like Elena, as much of a betrayal as it felt to say that about her best friend, she simply wasn't. It didn't mean she loved any less. It meant -she liked to think--that she had a modicum of self respect and if that was a modicum more than Elena, then so be it.

"You've known me long enough. I'm not your average damsel in distress and I'm not as stu--impulsive as you and Stefan were."

"Love is not impulsive."

"Love is the most impulsive thing there is, Damon." If the look on her face was somewhat incredulous it was only because Bonnie could not understand how someone like Damon couldn't understand that. Five centuries and he hadn't figured out what Bonnie had realized on her last day of high school. What was love but a feeling that made you absolutely foolish things? _Stupid_ foolish things. It wasn't even a foolish that could be redeemed. _Well_ , Bonnie thought to herself, not unless you're Elena anyway. "It's rash, nothing's certain... you could _die_."

Bonnie very pointedly ignored the knowing grin Damon passed her at her last words. A tendril of red fell down in front of her face and she ducked when Damon reached out to brush it back behind her ear. She reached for a wooden spoon on the counter instead, carefully avoiding his gaze.

"Love is not impulsive," Damon smoothly repeated his words from a moment ago, seemingly unaffected by being turned down. "What happened to love conquers all? Dying romantically with people crying of your body? Your hair splayed out around you. You do remember, don't you?"

Bonnie remembered. "I was eighteen."

"And now you're twenty-five," he said.

"Which is absolutely nothing to you, I know. I get it, Damon." Flour flew over the rim of the bowl as Bonnie stirred the mixture rather violently. Her face flushed red, the blood colouring the pale skin between her freckled cheeks. She noticed when Damon licked his lips, but again she turned her gaze away, saying, "It's nothing to me either. That's my point."

"Nothing?" Damon laughed, dark eyes flashing. "Nothing, right. You have seventy years left at best, though realistically it's more like fifty. What's the average age? Seventy-five?"

"And this, from someone who claims to love me."

She hated that they put love at the center of all this. If she loved him she would want to be with him. If he loved her he wouldn't keep asking. He would wait. But waiting wasn't something Damon did incredibly well.

"Are you ready?" Damon had asked not twenty minutes before after walking into Mrs. Flowers' kitchen from the backdoor.

"I'm ready to make cookies," Bonnie had responded, a scowl on her lips and hands on her hips. And that's what she'd proceeded to do.

The question was always the same. _Everything_ had changed, everything but the question. Bonnie sometimes looked at herself in the mirror, marveling at how much she'd changed since their senior year at the Fells Church high school. She, Meredith, and Elena had graduated from high school. Meredith was gone. She'd left for school in New York and had barely come back since. Elena left for Europe with Stefan, bypassing college completely, not to mention life altogether. That left Bonnie.

Bonnie, alone in Fells Church. And they'd teased her mercilessly for it the summer after high school, Elena and Meredith had. It didn't matter to Bonnie though, because quite honestly, in her mind, she'd come out ahead. Her small school had treated her well _and_ she'd been able to come home and see her family on the weekends. She'd had her boyfriend, and she still had him even now that she'd graduated. She was supporting herself too... well, mostly. The point was, she had a life. A real one. She was _alive_. She was doing things and while she did them she was breaking a sweat, smelling the air around her, feeling surfaces underneath her fingertips. Bonnie liked being alive, she liked it very much and she didn't understand why anyone would choose differently. Elena had and Elena glowed now, in all of her undead beauty.

Bonnie dumped a tupperwear bowl filled with melted butter into the batter and continued to stir. "But Elena can't breathe, can she?" she muttered to herself,

"Oh, this is about Elena and my brother then," Damon said, rolling his eyes. He perched a hip against the counter Bonnie was mixing on and looked at her intently.

"No, this is about making rash decisions before I'm ready to."

She'd been 'ready' once. The summer before college, she'd been plenty ready, but Damon hadn't been willing. Bonnie had never figured out why. Perhaps an attack of consciousness on his part, or if he simply hadn't been sure about spending eternity with someone... not after what had happened with Katherine. Obviously that hadn't worked out very well at all and perhaps Damon had learned something from it. Briefly.

Where Damon had perhaps forgotten this lesson, eventually it stuck with Bonnie. Her initial desire to be bitten and changed had faded exponentially.

She loved Damon. She did not love the idea of being dead. At least, she didn't yet. Bonnie didn't completely discredit the option of one day joining Damon, because she _did_ love him and she understood that, yes, sometimes people did the extreme for love. "I love you, but there're things I want to do before I die. Just because Elena didn't have any aspir-- I'm not Elena, let's put it that way."

"So you're not ready then."

"No," Bonnie said, shaking her head. She gave the spoon a final turn around the bowl before deciding her mixing was finished. Finally, she turned to look Damon in the eye. "No, Damon. When I--when I see Rome? When I see the Taj Mahal? Hell... when I go to the beach next summer? I want to be alive. I don't--I want to experience things. For real... not some imitation. I want to see the world before I die. Doesn't that make sense? When I go to the Stonehenge, I want to be able to feel the energy running through the stones and when I see the Caribbean, I want to stand in the _sun_ without being terrified of being turned to ashes. "

"I'm not sure one is allowed to touch the--"

Bonnie interrupted him, snapping slightly. "Yes you _are_. I looked it up. It's part of my plan. My _life_ plan. Being with you is on there too, and I want that, but it doesn't mesh all at once. I have to do things first. And I don't..."her voice trailed slightly as she struggled to come up with the words. "This isn't some romance novel, you know? I'm not going to swoon into your incredibly handsome arms and present my pale, virgin neck to you. Those girls apparently don't have anything to do with their lives."

Damon was too fast for her to stop this time when he reached out to brush her hair away from her neck and face, pushing the strands behind her shoulder so that she could be seen. His eyes locked momentarily on her neck until Bonnie found them once again and her hand brushed against his gently. The contact sent a warm flush across her skin and a tingling sensation up her spine which sent her lips curving into a pleasant smile. It was the same reaction every time and though she'd grown used to it, it hadn't grown old. Bonnie knew she couldn't live without it.

He squeezed her fingertips and she momentarily forgot what she'd been doing. "I love you."

"You're fixated." Bonnie watched him as he watched her neck. Perhaps it was an unconscious movement on his part, but she could not help but notice the way his eyes followed her skin. "I love you. I'm not ready to change everything I am for you. I'm not ready to die for you."

Damon grinned and his thumb ran across her palm. "Next year?"

"You ask every year," she pointed out. "You're very persistent. Patient."

"A year won't mean anything once I have you forever." And the look on his face let her know that she was not meant to take that line entirely seriously. She was eternally glad for that, or else she might have had to reach up and smack him for the sheer idiocy. Instead she let out a soft flow of giggles under her breath and turned back to her cookie batter.

Damon waited in the kitchen while Bonnie finished her ~~Solstice~~ Christmas cookies and even gallantly pulled them out of the oven for her when they were finished, sans oven mitt. Bonnie accused him of showing off, but happily showed Damon where to lay them on the table and smacked his hands away when he tried to take one before they'd cooled.

Later, as they curled up together on the couch in Mrs. Flowers' parlour. Bonnie could feel Damon's lips brush across her neck.

Bonnie McCullough was twenty-five. Barely two years out of college, she lived in a boarding house on the outskirts of town because it made her feel independent even though she could lean on her parents as a crutch whenever she needed to. She worked at the small occult store down by the road that led out to the high way where she was paid an hourly salary. Barely enough to live off of, certainly not enough to fund her travel dreams of grandeur. When she wasn't working, she dreamed and baked cookies, all the while looking for a raven to perch on the back step.

The raven perched. Changed. Questioned. It was a weekly ritual, one Bonnie found both annoying and comforting.

"Love is the most impulsive thing in the world," Bonnie said as she felt Damon's teeth on her neck. She didn't push him away, just ducked her head slightly. "I'm not that impulsive."

"Will you ever be?" he whispered.

Bonnie didn't answer.


End file.
